Nine barracks at Auschwitz death camp were vandalized with antisemitic, Holocaust-denying phrases

[Omaha Steve]

Source: Washington Post

By Jaclyn Peiser

Nine windowless wooden barracks that each housed hundreds of prisoners at a time at an Auschwitz death camp were marked with antisemitic phrases and Holocaust-denying slogans on Tuesday, the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum said.

The spray-painted vandalism was on buildings at Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the Nazi-run extermination site in occupied Poland. About 1 million people were killed there, more than 90 percent of whom were Jews, according to the museum. About 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

Police have not yet made an arrest, though they are reviewing security tapes and analyzing the graffiti.

“Such [an] incident — an offense against the Memorial Site — is, above all, an outrageous attack on the symbol of one of the greatest tragedies in human history and an extremely painful blow to the memory of all the victims of the German Nazi Auschwitz-Birkenau camp,” the museum said in a statement.

Link to tweet

The railway tracks from where prisoners were directed to the gas chambers to be killed inside the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz. (Markus Schreiber/AP)

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/06/auschwitz-birkenau-vandalized-holocaust/

[AZLD4Candidate]

1. My people have been under attack since the Middle Ages

I am literally speechless.

[Evolve Dammit]

2. This is just evil. No words.

[BigDemVoter]

7. Just what was going through my head. . . No words. . .

[TalenaGor]

3. like writing 'there is no sun' - on the sun

idiots

[Coventina]

13. I had a similar thought. n/t

[GB_RN]

4. Nazis...

I hate Nazis.

It’s too bad that their ideas, if you want to call them that, didn’t die in the fires of the fall 3rd Reich. Unfortunately, you can’t kill ideas…even really, epically, legendarily bad ones.

[Turbineguy]

5. It seems to me.....

That if you are going to deny an event, you do not do so where the event happened. You go elsewhere, say, Mad King Ludwig's Castle at Neuschwanstein for instance.

[Coventina]

14. As it happens, loot from murdered Jews was stored at Neuschwanstein during the Reich.

Strangely, they don't mention this fact during the tour.......

[Turbineguy]

16. I did not know that.

[SoCalDavidS]

6. Excuse Me For Asking

But shouldn't there be 24/7 security at Auschwitz for this very reason? Were these criminals able to evade that, or did they have free roam of the compound, and enough time to cause so much damage?

Sometimes I feel like the only way to eliminate these people, is to sacrifice the human race in totality. It is a sad reflection on humanity.

[Behind the Aegis]

9. It is as secure as they can afford.

The statement noted that while the security system at the 170-hectare site was "constantly being expanded", it was funded from the museum's budget, which had been hit during the coronavirus pandemic. Fully enclosing the site would not be possible for some time, it added.

In the tweet, last paragraph, it gives a full statement on the plans to seal the site, but 420 acres is a big area to secure.

[SoCalDavidS]

11. I'm Torn. Perhaps They Should Leave The Vandalism As Is

To show how HATE & EVIL are alive and well in the world. We've learned shit in the last 80 years.

[Demovictory9]

19. 420 is huge area... same size as ucla campus....

[chowder66]

8. This is nauseating.

All of the hatred towards others that are just trying to live their lives is grotesque.

I will never, ever understand why there is this weird obsession for hating Jews, POC, LGBTQ, Immigrants aka Foreigners, Women, Children, Earth, Science, Education, Facts.....It's so fucking mental.

[Corgigal]

10. Time for cameras.

I will take a tour to monitor. This can not happen again.

[Fortinbras Armstrong]

18. My wife and I went to Auschwitz, where my mother's parents were killed.

After I had recited the Mourner's Kaddish to honor them, Suzanne asked to leave because the place was really creeping her out. As we were leaving, she said to me, "Dante had it wrong. What is written over the gates of Hell is not, 'Abandon all hope, you who enter here', but rather, 'Arbeit macht frei'."

[AdamGG]

12. The said thing is, even if they identify who did this

the far right Polish government probably won't do anything about it.

[Coventina]

15. Same thing popped into my head. n/t

[marble falls]

17. My friend Irvin's parents were in Birkenau ...

... when I would visit, I'd see photos from the twenties, thirties, his father's tailor's tools, some decorative items. I couldn't understand how a family that had been in Poland hundreds of years and reduce by the Nazis to exactly six on the whole planet still had anything.

I couldn't understand how they managed to hold onto it through the camps. Like Laurie Anderson said when her father died, it was as if a library burnt down. When Ester Fichtenbaum died, a library definitely burned down.

She told me that when they were released, they walked home and dug these things up and then walked to a then West German Displaced Person's camp, where they lived until 1952 when they came to the US. Irv's sister was born in the camp, Irv after they got to Akron, Ohio. Irv was born '54 and his dad died in '58.

I know the Holocaust is real. I know it's effects will be unfolding for a longer time still.

Added: I had heard about an an incident from Irv that had extra significance after I learned from his mother how those treasures made it to Boomfield Ave.

When Irv was four, around the time of his father's passing, Ester caught Irv putting money through the floor boards of the dining room of their home. A genetic memory? Reaction to a genetic trauma?

This story has stuck to me for more than 50 years, I think of it almost weekly.